Heartless Beings
by Bennu
Summary: Yaoi - Updated, after a very long time. Now it is over; nobody gets what they want; everybody tries.
1. Get what you want

"Heartless Beings"  
by Bennu  
For Tomo Trillions, January, and - of course - Ann V.  
-----------------------------------  
I stare into this mirror so tired of this life   
If only you would speak to me or care if I'm alive   
Once I swore I would die for you but I never meant like this   
No, I never meant like this...  
  
--Stabbing Westward, "Shame"  
  
  
The spiral staricase is something He found in the SEEDs archive, a human design from some sort of ancient signal tower. Despite its low origins, he found a passion for it, and it was built. A black wrought-iron serpent, twisting up a pillar to his quarters, every step a inlaid with ember-colored enamels in eight-legged shapes that no one climbing can avoid without making a conscious effort to. I do no such thing.  
  
Every spider is crushed fully under my feet, and every spider has the name of a sin.  
  
He is angry with me, as usual. I have failed Him in every possible way; I deserve no less than His boiling contempt.  
  
His rage is palatable.  
  
"Why?" He snarls, His boot catching me in the ribs. "Why have you not yet brought my brother to me?" A psychic blow slams me into the wall. He crouches over me, my head grabbed roughly between His hands, the white specks of a coming cuncussion dancing over His features. "Your failure is disturbing, Legato. Why is this taking so long? He should be here with me now, and it should be him under me instead of you... If I did not know better, Legato, I would say it was your hesitation that is causing me this greif..."  
  
He is so close, I can feel His breath on my cheek, burning and clean. I open my mouth to whisper a denial that I would ever knowingly increase His already horrible load of suffering, and that I will bring His errant brother to Him soon - but no coherent sound emerges, because His lips are brushing mine, and His warm tongue is probing... Oh God, He's kissing me -  
  
"Oh, Vashu," He breathes, breaking away, stroking my hair. "Vashu, my beloved, my only, won't you come back to me? Where are you, Vashu? Can't you feel my pain... I want you so badly..."  
  
Ah, yes. I am the replacement. He was kissing Vash the Stampede, not me. Never me. I do not even deserve to think of such a thing, to think of Him debasing himself as if with an animal...  
  
But it seems if I have. My whole being is trembling, my parted lips issuing forth a moan, my body and mind and heart and whatever soul I might yet have crying out for Him, for just one more kiss, for Him to just whisper my name in that lusting, otherworldly voice...  
  
He senses my thoughts. Standing, an imperious glare on His face once more, He delivers another kick, slowly and deliberately crushing the ball of His foot against my groin and twisting. I gasp in pain, falling over and curling around myself, shivering because I'm still on fire from His sensuous touches, tears pricking behind my eyes becuase it fucking hurts...  
  
"My brother," He says plainly, the spitting growl implied by His words. "You are to leave immediately, taking the Hornfreak with you. My brother is to come back. You will not fail me, Legato Bluesummers - " He truly did spit out my name, it landed next to me on the cold metal floor, like baggage being tossed out of a steamer - "because you exist only to die, and you cannot die until I am whole again."  
  
The toe of a boot nudges under my chin, lifting my head to face Him. The light is directly behind Him, limning Him in gold, casting shade across His face - except for the slitted glow of His icy eyes. "So, why do you exist, human?"  
  
"To die," I whisper.  
  
"And why do you die?"  
  
"To please you, Master."  
  
"And what would please me even more?"  
  
"The return of Vash-sama to you, Master."  
  
"What is your mission, then, you insect?"  
  
"Eternal pain and suffering to Vash the Stampede."  
  
He smiles. 


	2. Savior and saved

I had no intention of extending this until thirty minutes ago. The Millions Muse doesn't take no for an answer, I guess.

There are no secrets between the savior and the saved.

He stumbles and bows, a thread of blood dribbling down past one of those half-lidded, obscenely gold eyes. It catches me for a moment, a flash of desperate shame, just as quickly erased as it began.

"Eternal pain and suffering to _you." You cannot hide a damn thing from me, Bluesummers. You have no self; you are completely, utterly, forever mine. Except now, I have opened the door and asked you, unequivocally, to leave._

He nods, bows again, brow tightening imperceptibly with the fresh ache his movement creates, then vanishes from my light forever. You've fallen from my grace for the last time, pet, and there's only one thing you can do to make up for it now. I made you real, Bluesummers, and now I have sent you to be unmade. It's sickening, how much I care.

You _were useful, and admittedly beautiful – if destruction is beautiful, if a twice-broken, once-saved thing has value. Already, it seems quieter here, without the muffled, constant muttering snarl of your mind tagging around my consciousness like a dog. Like the stench of humanity, your faint stink of drying blood and rotting flowers. Roses, geraniums: the air is notably purer now, laced with the perfume of wholeness for the first time in a century._

Or, perhaps, in forty-three years.

Already, you are erasing yourself, shutting down memory and mind as you prepare to complete your wasted life. It's an appropriately poetic justice; another symptom of the human disease at work. The standards of your species would call me callous, standing here reveling as a man who plainly loved me shreds the last bits of his existence into the starving night. But it's appropriate; why should I mourn like a human beast?

My brother is coming home, and a hateful being will get what he wants at last.

Call me heartless, then, but he was good. Not good _enough, but he was close._

There are no secrets between the savior and the saved.


	3. Eien no kurushimi

I thought that this fic was over, and then I found this on my computer. Oh well. It's really, really done this time. Promise.  
  
-------------  
  
Kill me.  
  
Kill me as you would a wretched animal, some pathetic thing already dying in the garret of a street. I know there must be pity behind your fear - oh yes oh yes, you fear me. I know, I can see it through the sickly emerald of your eyes, the same way I can see the disgust in His blue. Fear and hatred; so strange to think that I'm enough to inspire such in higher souls. I don't deserve His focus, or even yours, despite...  
  
I don't know. I don't particularly even care anymore, beyond the cold ring of a pistol's mouth pressed up against my forehead. It's the same place His gloved hand first touched me, forty long years ago, as He pushed away the voices that had overtaken my mind. Such a delicate touch, perhaps similar to the feeling of a bullet exploding through my skull, quieting the dust behind me with blood. A fitting end. Blood to blood dust to dust and death to death. I whisper it with all the soft command I can find within me.  
  
"Kill me. It's easy, all you have to do is pull the trigger..."  
  
He refuses me again, with an edge of panic in his voice that makes the corners of my mouth turn up. He's slipping at last. If it were in my nature to do so, I would laugh in delight. Finally, I'll be dead. He will be pleased, and His brother's salvation  
  
(damnation)  
  
will be secured. I've been waiting for this since I was first spat out of my whore mother's body, since the voices first crept in through my infant ears, since He first deigned me worthy of His blessing. Pull the trigger, Vash the Stampede; give me hell so He can have His heaven.  
  
/"So, why do you exist, human?"/  
  
To die, of course. I am the crucible, the death that will bring the broken back together. Ironic, then, that it must be me, the one who will never be whole. Or holy. Or loved.  
  
Only used.  
  
Kill me, Vash, so that my life won't come to nothing.  
  
And maybe then I can find my place in the heart of a heartless being. 


End file.
